In the middle of the first period on Saturday afternoon against the Boston Bruins, the Philadelphia Flyers potentially suffered the one thing that can absolutely not happen: An injury to goaltender Sam Ersson.
The 25-year-old netminder left the game during a television timeout as we saw Aleksei Kolosov warming up on the ice and the younger goalie took his place in between the pipes. Ersson headed off and down the tunnel, but it did not look like it was anything too obvious.
As the tweet mentions, just minutes before this, while saving a heavy shot from a Boston Bruin, Ersson’s right skate blade popped off and he quickly waved down to his bench to get someone out there to replace his blade as soon as possible. That did happen. A trainer came out, pushed a new and fresh blade into Ersson’s skate and play continued.
But then it was after that break where we noticed Kolosov warming up, that things might appear to be more serious than thought. Ersson does point down to his feet and give a shrug as he made his way to the bench, and he certainly skated over there under his own power and did not need any assistance.
At the time of writing this, we are still in the dark. It could just be a prolonged equipment issue but it certainly feels more likely that something was tweaked and he had to leave the game for a potential injury. You would think that if it was just something with his equipment, it would take less than several minutes.
If Ersson is missing for any prolonged period of time, the Flyers are in trouble. As things stand, an unproven Kolosov with under four periods of NHL experience under his belt will be pushed into the starting role and the out-of-place, awkward netminder of Ivan Fedotov will be his backup. Well, we can already start looking at top picks for the 2025 NHL Draft in that scenario.
UPDATE:
So, yeah. It’s an injury that Ersson is dealing with and not just an equipment issue. We’re doomed.
ANOTHER UPDATE:
Flyers general manager Danny Briere officially announced that Ersson will not be returning to the game.
WOW, ANOTHER UPDATE:
This should be the final update. While on the air at Sportsnet, during the “Saturday Headlines” segment, reporter Elliotte Friedman mentioned that the Flyers are “looking at about a week” when it comes to Ersson’s absence.
This coming week, the Flyers are hosting the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday and then heading down to Florida to face the Panthers and Lightning. Certainly a trio of terrifying games to not have your starting netminder, but it could certainly be worse.
